


Only This and Nothing More

by steelneena



Series: CR1 Oneshots and Short Series [9]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, No Actual Character Death, Oneshot, angsty, i guess, i saw the post on tumblr and I couldn't help myself, implications of impending character death, mention of a canonically dead main character, sad but also peaceful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 14:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20136622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/steelneena
Summary: It starts as a cough.Percy knows it's more.





	Only This and Nothing More

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the song "You are a Memory" by Messages to Bears https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2w8Cm0ZZ2s
> 
> Title from Poe's "The Raven"
> 
> Idea from: https://rollmarishative.tumblr.com/post/186145456075/ive-been-thinking-about-this-all-day

It started with a cough. It wasn’t unusual. He’s had plenty of coughs before. Really, though, in the end, he wasn’t sure why it manifested that way in particular. It could have been anything. It could have been an ache in his side, a palpitation of the heart, a gradual weakness.

It’s not.

It’s a cough.

Persistent.

At first, it was little more than an annoyance, something he wrote off as intermittent. Allergies, perhaps, or a reaction to one of the fumes in his workshop, or the chemicals he used to shine and purify the metals for his inventions. At first, it was nothing. The children got used to it almost faster than he did, and certainly more so than Vex, who still looked at him with the pity only a mother could have developed, for she’d certainly not have felt so bad for him before their children were born.

When, in the fourth month, it worsened, Percy stopped believing it to be nothing. A pervasive illness of some sort, slow moving, debilitating, or the long term effects of his workshop. It wasn’t as though he were as complete of an idiot as he’d been in his youth. His oldest were barely twenty-two, his youngest still toddling about, reaching her arms up to be held by her Papa.

So Pike was his first recourse.

(He didn’t need to worry Vex needlessly. Not yet.)

But Pike cast all manner of spells and found nothing pressingly wrong with him, her wide eyes shining with concern.

“We’ll figure it out, Percy, whatever it is. Maybe it’s nothing! It could be psychosomatic,” she’d offered hopefully, but he could still hear the defeat, cowering in the back of her tone.

He’d closed his eyes then, and imagined the world exactly as he wanted it – only happiness for his beloved family as long as he lived. He could give them that. He could. It just wasn’t going to be as long a life as he’d anticipated, that was all.

Glad that he’d waited to decide if he was going to say anything until after Pike had exhausted all possibly avenues, Percy only smiled, telling her he’d keep her updated. The bloody kerchief in his pocket burned at his thigh.

Vex would be the hardest to keep happy, and so, he’d decided the best way to do it was simply to tell the truth. It would be better than lying to her, in his last days. Maybe it was a defeatist attitude, but truth of it was simply that Percy knew better than to expect miracles. The other shoe had dropped, whatever it was, and the end was clearly in his sights.

Forty-four was a good age. Certainly twice the lifespan he’d expected to achieve. A success, in that regard. He was blessed. Blessed to have lived long enough to confess his feelings to Vex, to help save the world more than once, to have had not one, not two, but seven children to love and care for and hold dear and teach to be better than he.

It was with that that Percy stood outside the open bedroom door, holding the evidence of his failing health in hands, waiting for the right moment.

Waiting for Vex to notice him.

“Percival?” she asked, eventually. “Darling, how long have you been standing there?”

What was grief? What was denial? He didn’t know it. Only acceptance. He’d spent far too many years of his life wrapped in that agonizing cycle.

“Long enough, darling,” he replied quietly, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. “Come, dear,” he said, putting the kerchief back into his pocket as he reached for her hand and lifted it to his lips for a kiss. “Sit with me for a while?”

“Of course. Whatever you need.”

They settled beside one another on their bed, quiet, domestic, but an air of melancholy kept itself wrapped around Percy’s shoulders, invading that most sacred space.

“I talked with Pike the other day, Vex’ahlia.” His hand twisted around the kerchief in his pocket. “About the cough, you know.”

“Oh, good!” Vex pressed a laugh through her lungs, but the joy was false, marred by a nervousness that infected her smile. “You’re all better and set then? No more annoyance? Was it allergies?”

“Ah, no. Not quite.” A chuckle escaped him. “Far from it, in fact.” He sighed heavily, which brought on the cough, which brought out the kerchief. When he looked back to Vex, her face was contorted with concern.

“Darling?”

His fingers uncurled from around the small cloth. He’d kept them around mostly to wipe soot from his brow, usually leaving them black and useless. Vex’s gasp told him that she’d seen that no longer to be the case.

“Pike doesn’t know what’s wrong.” His heart felt light. Lighter than a feather. His words tripped from his tongue. “I should think that it’s obvious. I’m sorry, dear.” Percy looked up to her, her beautiful face marred by anguish, grief stricken. “I’m sorry to be leaving you so soon. Can you forgive me?”

A sob strangled from her throat as she blinked away tears. “No! No, you’re not leaving me. You’re not leaving us, Percival. _Percy_, oh _Gods_.”

“I’m afraid so, dearest.” He lifted his hand to her cheek, porcelain smooth, dark against his own pale skin. Beneath his hand, Vex was shaking.

“We have to figure this out. We have to. We _will_. Percy, I can’t-“

He shook his head, sadly. “You can and you will go on without me when it comes to that. I’m just sorry that it has to be now.”

“No!” Vex jerked back and away from him. “No! We don’t know why this is happening. There’s an answer somewhere and I am going to find it, whether you think there is or not.” Biting her lip hard, Vex blinked back tears fiercely. “I love you, Percival, I can’t let you just give in to this without fighting it.”

“And I would never ask you to, Vex’ahlia. Never. And that’s why I’ve told you. You can do and pursue whatever avenues you desire, my darling. But whatever time I have left, however long or short, I just want to spend it with you, and the children, not sad, but happy. Normal, even.”

“You mean not to tell them.” Vex was wide eyed with horror.

“No, I mean for us to determine a course of action together.” He reached for her hand and she took his up again without hesitation, holding tightly. “I’ll admit that I considered saying nothing. But I can’t be so cruel to you. To them. Not anymore.”

Without warning, Vex pulled him in, kissing him almost savagely, as if she could feed life into his lungs that way, but, when it was over, she leaned her forehead into his, and wept while he held her, the strength of his arms still enough to keep her secure until she drifted off to sleep.

Eventually, he laid her down on the bed, delicately brushing her hair out of the way and pressing a kiss to her temple before leaving their room. The halls where echoing and empty, save for a few guards stationed in precise locations, who didn’t so much as nod as he passed by. One by one, he went to his children’s doors, peering inside to check on them, pulling up covers, kissing foreheads and blowing out lanterns, and, finally, leaning down over the baby to palm her fuzzy head and brush a finger over her cheek. Percy made his way to the castle’s entrance and out into the coolness of the night.

The wind blew against his face and through his hair, a cool breath from the universe to clear his mind. For a while, he stood in the middle of the street, just listening to the sounds of the sleeping world before finally setting his feet on their proper course, stopping to cough only three times. Before long, the temple that he’d had constructed was in plain view. Few used it in the way he was about to, these days. Long years had passed them by since Vax was lost to _her_, since Percy had decreed that he would never forgive _her_, never give up on his brother, on the other half of Vex’s soul. His hand landed on the cold stone, chill as the bones of death, and pushed, opening the door to the temple like the black maw of a waiting beast.

It was still and silent within as the stone door fell shut with a dull sound behind him. No light flickered, but Percy didn’t need it, shedding his clothes where he stood until the cool air was all that was left to envelop him. The sound of his feet hitting the ground as he walked to the edge of the crimson pool echoed in the chamber. For a moment, Percy hesitated and then, the image of his family held within his mind, Percy dipped the first toe in, and then stepped forward completely, descending into the icy pool of blood step for step until all that remained was to submerge himself.

“You know why I’m here. I’m not looking to bargain. I know that this is the end meant for me. I only want to put my family at ease. You owe Vex’ahlia that much. Do it…do it for _him_, if for no other reason. Have I not respected you, in the time since? Though I may have decried your actions in my grief, I have kept this temple, this temple which I had built. All I want is answer. No more, no less.”

His words fell oddly flat within the room, muted by the coagulated liquid, deafening all other sound. His breath was so quiet it hardly felt like he was taking one before, finally, he delved beneath the surface.

Nothing had changed about the process. The further down he swam, the deeper the pool went, until his breath was straining and he knew what he had to do, despite the terror of it, and opened his mouth, crimson copper flowing onto his tongue, down his throat, choking, choking and he swamp up, futilely and then, just when it was about to become too much, broke the surface into a dark, endless realm, red threads suspended overhead, and a pinprick of white coming closer, closer to him until the mask was clear as day, piercing white against the black.

The voice, soft, dangerous, drifted throughout the room, subsuming all other sound.

_“Percival.”_

“You know why I’m here. I’m not attempting to contest you. I’ve already outrun my fate a few times too many. I know that this is the end for me. I feel it. But Vex’ahlia…my children… they deserve to be at peace with this. So, I ask now…I know that nothing can be done. But I’d like to know what’s happening, why it’s happening, at the least. Let her have this. Let Vex’ahlia have this one thing. You took her brother, and now, you will take me, and send me off where I belong, and I have settled my account with that, but” his voice finally broke. “she deserves more.”

He could not bring himself to utter any further words of outright plea.

In the silence that reigned, for what seemed time immemorial, Percy heard nothing, felt nothing. No wind, no movement, not even the press of his own breath out into the abyss, nor the beat of a heart beneath his chest.

The simulation of death was all consuming.

_“You _will_ come to me before long. You are yet young, broken child, but your actions have led you down this path. You bonded yourself with a creature of utter darkness and when last you passed by this way, he claimed you for his own.”_

Percy shuddered at the memory; he kept it locked down and far away, always, but in such a place, under the power of such an entity, there was no holding it at bay. It burst forward, causing him to lurch in place, gasping without breath at the phantom memory of Orthax’s razor sharp teeth and claws as they tore through the very fabric of his soul.

_“Your soul was forfeit. And now, it is damaged beyond the ability to repair.”_

The only tears that ran down his cheek at the lingering haze of pain were of blood.

“I understand.”

The enormity of her shadowed shape suddenly contracted and reformed, and she was stood before him, no less imposing, despite the fact that she was now roughly at eyelevel with him.

_“You have grown.”_ It almost sounded like a commendation. “_but you are no less broken for it. Return, with your knowledge, and find peace.”_

Percy swallowed the rancor bubbling to the surface of his thoughts, and, tight lipped, nodded once, stiffly and then, as blatantly as possible, turned his face away from the goddess.

“Vax’ildan!”

There was nothing. Nothing from the ether, nothing from the Matron herself. Not a ripple.

He lowered his head, closed his eyes. Subdued. “I’ll see you soon, brother.”

When he looked back, the masked face of the goddess was still staring at him, impassive, unmoved.

“Did you ever feel?” he asked, and it came not from anger, nor from sadness, but purely curiosity. “You lived, once. You were a woman. A person. Did you love? Do you still?”

Behind the mask, two pinpricks of red began to glow, and whatever it was beneath him that was holding him up suddenly gave way and he plunged back into the icy carnelian pool.

When he resurfaced, it wasn’t to the vast expanse of a Goddess’ realm, but the ominous stone homage to her name and nature, erected by his own order. He felt none of the old hatred for her, none of his icy ire.

Only pity.

Nearby, he navigated his way to the basin kept for those who communed with the goddess to refresh themselves. Percy washed away the traces of blood from his body, from his hair, even his mouth, and then dried off, slowly, methodically, before dressing and returning to the castle.

To the room within that held his sleeping wife.

Once more, he sat down on the bed, reaching out to caress her beautiful face, to contemplate the many blessed days he’d been allowed to wake to see her, peaceful and lovely, before laying down beside her, fully dressed, to drift off to sleep, in the hopes that he'd wake the next day to that same, glorious sight. 


End file.
